20 Sales: Zoom's Head of North America Sales on When To Hire a Head of Sales, Why You Should Hire a Head of Sales Before Sales Reps, The 3 Traits to Look for When Hiring Sales Reps & What Sales Leaders Can Do To Make Their Sales Team Feel Like They Are Wi

Mitch Tarica is Head of North America Sales at Zoom Video Communications. Before joining Zoom, Mitch spent over 5 years at RingCentral including as Senior VP of Worldwide Sales and Customer Success. Finally, before RingCentral, Mitch was at Oracle for over 7 years in numerous different sales roles. In Today’s Episode with Mitch Tarica You Will Learn: 1.) Entry into Sales: How did Mitch make his way into sales with one of the first SaaS companies in the world? What were his early lessons on what truly great sales entails? What elements does Mitch fear we have lost in the art of sales over time? 2.) The Playbook: Should the founder be the one to create the sales playbook? What are the signs that the founder has a repeatable and scalable playbook? When is the right time to make the first sales hire? Should it be a Head of Sales or Sales Rep? How does the first hire depend on whether you are PLG or enterprise sales led? 3.) The Hiring Process: How does Mitch structure the hiring process? Step by step, what does he want to achieve? What questions does Mitch ask in the first interview, always? What are the 3 traits that Mitch believes all great sales hires have? How does he test for them? How do Zoom use practical sales tests to determine the ability of a potential sales hire? How does Mitch see many founders make mistakes in the sales hiring process? 4.) Sales Onboarding: What are the crucial steps to do sales onboarding right? How should leaders structure the first 30,60 and 90 days for their new reps? What are some early red flags that leaders should watch for with new reps? What more can leaders do to make sure their reps are as successful as possible in the early days?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  Did someone say 20 sales? Yes, this is 20 Sales, the monthly show where we deep dive with one of the world's leading sales leaders on what it takes to start and scale the world's best sales organisations today. Now, joining us for the discussion today, we have a rock star from one of the companies of the last decade, the one and only Zoom, and I'm thrilled to welcome Mitch Tarica. Mitch is Head of North America Sales at Zoom. Before joining, Mitch spent over five years at Ring Central, including as a Senior VP of Worldwide Sales and Customer Success. And finally, before Ring Central, Mitch was at Oracle for over seven years in numerous different sales roles. Now, I want to say a huge thank you to Eric Yuan at Zoom for the intro to Mitch today, without which this episode wouldn't have happened. But before we dive into the show today, here's an alarming stat for sales leaders out there.

• 0:43Harry Stebbings?

  According to research done by Zand.com, only 28% of deals are forecasted accurately. 28%! Why is that? Either you don't have enough reliable data to draw from in Salesforce, or you based your forecast on wishful thinking instead of facts. So how do you get your team to input all the data you need without hounding them around every corner and taking away their sailing time? Well, that's where Dooley comes in. Dooley is what top-performing sales reps use day to day instead of Salesforce. It's the fastest, easiest way for sellers to input deal data in real time, update their pipeline in a snap, and manage every deal at once, so nothing falls through the cracks. It's a dream for sales teams because reps save hours of admin grunt work and managers get up to 60% more accurate deal data in Salesforce.

• 1:28Harry Stebbings?

  So you can build a sales forecast you can feel confident about. Visit dooley.ai/demo to speak with a Dooley rep today. And speaking of upleveling your team with incredible tools like Dooley there, SalesLoft is the leading sales engagement platform, helping sales teams drive more revenue with the modern revenue workspace. It's the one place sales teams can go to prospect, manage active deals, and get the insights they need to coach seller performance. Forecast with accuracy and find out what steps to take to close more deals. Some of the world's leading companies like IBM, Shopify, and Stripe all love a new SalesLoft, and so can you. It's the new way to sell. Find out more at salesloft.com. And finally, to scale your business, you need

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  customers, but the CRM software model is thirty five years old and never evolved to properly support modern businesses. Most legacy platforms were built for a single, rigid, repeatable sales process. Well, Copper is dramatically different kind of CRM. Built for Google Workspace businesses, Copper works right alongside you in your inbox, and so it's flexible, it's versatile, you'll love it regardless of how you run your business. Plus, it requires virtually no training because it works just like all your Google Apps work. Get set up in less than a day and easily customize your CRM to fit your needs. This will be the first time that your team loves you as a leader for the choice of CRM. I promise you that. And so see why more than thirty thousand businesses love Copper, a flexible CRM that grows

• 2:54Harry Stebbings?

  with you. Get a twenty percent discount on any annual plan. Just go to copper.com/20vc. But I'm so bored of hearing my own voice now, so I want to hand over to Mitch Tureka, Head of North America Sales at Zoom Video Communications.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 3:16Harry Stebbings?

  Mitch, this is such a joy for me to do. I spoke to so many people before the show, and I spoke to Eric, who said that you are the master of sales. I mean, we've got to love Eric, but thank you so much for joining me today.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Eric, thank you. It's an honor to be part of this. I follow you in multiple venues, and you're the master, sir. Your reputation precedes you. I'm very excited and honored to be a part of this with you and your community. It means a lot, so thank you.

• 3:39Harry Stebbings?

  You are very kind. I do want to start there with a little bit of context and a little bit of stories. In a succinct two to three minutes, tell me, how did you make your way into the world of tech and come to lead some of the most powerful sales orgs? What was that entry point to where we are today?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Well, sales is in my DNA. It has been in my DNA since being a very young person. I started selling lady's shoes in my father's shoe store during high school, put myself through college, working at Nordstrom's, and then right out of college went into the realm of professional sales, working for ADP. ADP is one of the world's largest HRIS and payroll companies in the world, and I think ADP really was one of the first SaaS companies. So I got right into selling Services, selling solutions for customers. And then in nineteen ninety nine, I joined this very small startup company called Webex, helping people think very, very differently. And this very out there concept of convincing the world that video conferencing is the way to conduct work.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Think about that from where we are today. Spent seven years there and finished my last three years leading North America and helping Webex go through a very successful IPO and then a very successful acquisition by Cisco, which is where I got to meet some very special people in my life, including Eric Yuan, who is Zoom's CEO. I then got to spend seven years leading a very large part of Oracle's applications business and then joined Ring Central to help transform the world of PBX, moving phone systems off of premise and into cloud. I led global sales and customer success at Ring Central. And then that led me to two years ago where I got to rejoin my friend Eric Yuan and so many other great people and close colleagues here at Zoom, leading North America sales for Zoom.

• 5:22Harry Stebbings?

  I do want to start though, because you know, these shows are really designed to help founders understand how truly great sales leaders think and operate. And the first thing that I want to start on, actually maybe pre-sales team, but it's the question of, does the founder need to be the person who creates the first sales playbook? Or can that first sales playbook be created by a head of sales or a sales rep that you bring in? What are your thoughts?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Founder may not create the first sales playbook per se, but they are certainly leading by example on what they want done. You know, the founder sets the bar on the type of sales culture, caring, competitive, cutthroat, combative, whatever culture they want to infuse and instill, they're the ones that set that culture, that set their sales go to market. And I feel like, you know, the sales team's going to have to pull the founder into a lot of early customer interaction, especially at the beginning. Eric has led by example from the minute he started at Zoom up until I was on customer meetings with Eric as we closed the quarter. I've had the pleasure to work for some founders throughout most of my career. They have all been very, very involved from the onset, setting the tone for the sales.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Sales team, I think Eric has taken that to a whole nother level.

• 6:33Harry Stebbings?

  Now, you're going to be my advisor here. Hypothetically, I'm this young, first time founder. I'm hiring my sales team and I've got my sales team. How do the best founders set sales culture? Is it about repeating missions and how do I know what's the sales culture that I want? And then how do I instill it effectively?

• 6:51Speaker 02

  I mean, some of it comes from what your product or your service is and who you're touching. And founders are very in tune, right? With and hold that that product, that service, that market, you know, very close, near and dear. But then I feel like, look, they need to understand their product fit, their market fit. And then I think that determines, you know, what they want to do with their team and what type of team they want to bring in. Some of it has to do with their competitive landscape. Who are they competing against? You know, what does that competitive landscape look like out there? Some of that has to do with, you know, geographic boundaries. Where are their customers most? And that will determine a little bit on culture because selling and I've had an opportunity to lead global sales teams, different cultures around the world. I think there's a lot of different factors that they have to take in mind

• 7:34Speaker 02

  as they then want to determine, you know, what that culture looks like.

• 7:37Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask you, when we say about setting that culture, we actually need people to set a culture. And the question that I often have from founders is, Harry, do I hire a head of sales who will build the sales team and bring the reps? Or do I hire one or two reps and feel it out gradually with more junior hires? How do you advise founders when they pose that to you?

• 7:57Speaker 02

  My lean, Harry, head of sales first because I think a strong head of sales can do four things really, really well. First, they create that sales playbook that you asked about earlier, where the CEO is leading by example, but that head of sales creates that playbook. You know, second, they can hire the team that is needed to succeed. And frequently, you know, with ambiguity on exactly what's needed. And then third, they can build the culture in sales that's needed to drive ownership. And then finally and fourth, that head of sales can be very, very well aligned, cross-functionally throughout the rest of the organization, working with marketing, helping make sure the demand gen engine is strong. Are there channel partners that need, is the channel a big part of the go to market? So working very closely.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Mostly in the channel and really helping keep sales fed early on. I lean as to a head of sales, but I do think it varies.

• 8:46Harry Stebbings?

  No, listen, I'm actually with you and I also think it's much easier when they bring their team than when you kind of throw a head of sales with an existing team that they maybe didn't craft and create and there's that friction.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  That's another great point. Yes, you're right.

• 8:56Harry Stebbings?

  In terms of the right moment, how do you think about, and I know it's tough because it does vary again. How do you think about when is the right time for founders to start thinking about bringing in that head of sales? Is it a millionaire or is it much sooner? How do you think about that catalytic moment for the right time?

• 9:12Speaker 02

  I'm a data junkie. I love data. I think data leads us to really, really good, well-founded decisions. However, this is one of those rare times where I think feeling over fact might work. You know, there seems to be a tipping point where the CEO can no longer address certain things at the same time. Questions from customers, demand from prospects, market conditions. And then as you get to a certain point, right, more complex buying decisions that need a great seller who can navigate the company's processes. I think it does vary and depends on contract size, right, on what the average deal size or ASP. I think you can make it past a million ARR, but then once you get past that, at least from what I see, it's time. I think you have to bring that head of sales.

• 9:53Harry Stebbings?

  I think it's also about projecting yourself ahead because you suddenly get that and then you need a head of sales. Well, it takes six months to hire a head of sales. Sometimes it takes three months, but it's not tomorrow. So I totally agree.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  I completely agree with that. And look, like I said, Eric's involvement with customer, like nothing I've ever seen before. You know, but that customer base is going to be very, very demanding and you need to be able to spread out. I think you hit those inflection points for sure.

• 10:19Harry Stebbings?

  Is there ever a case where you don't want to bring the founder in or like, you know, I remember with my media company when we sold ad slots, you know, they were bringing me in. But then it was like founder dependent sales and I don't want a dependent sales model on me. It needs to scale. Is there ever a question of actually, it may be a nice fix, but it's not scalable. How do you think about that?

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Up until two years ago, I would agree with you. There are times you definitely do not. And either early times or even in the more mature model, you don't. But giving away the Zoom secret sauce here event, I think. As long as the founder knows how to properly delegate and the founder can truly trust their team, I think keeping the founder in more than keeping them out is more beneficial. And the trust piece is a big part of it. We're big believers here at Zoom in Covey's Speed of Trust. Eric has given out that book to every employee in the company. We were all asked to read it. We've been asked to share things about it. And what I like about Speed of Trust, if Eric can trust me to make the right decisions, and I don't

• 11:21Speaker 02

  need Eric in every involvement, engagement, or I don't need Ryan Azus, who is our CRO, I don't need them in every engagement to make decisions, we can make decisions a heck of a lot faster and solve for customer. You know, it really comes down to trusting the people that you bring in and them trusting you and not having to second guess decisions, you can run at a pace that others can't.

• 11:43Harry Stebbings?

  So Mitch, I'm naive. What is speed to trust?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Understanding that I'm going to trust my team. First of all, I've instilled all of the right company's core values, instilled that the company's mission is clear and relate to all of my employees, not just my head of sales. And then I have to be able to take a step back and trust that they are out there making good decisions and I'm not second guessing those decisions. And if I don't have to second guess those decisions and they can then go make those decisions on my behalf as I'm the founder of the company, we can move at a lightning speed where if I had to inspect and investigate every decision that is being made, it bogs us down. So that is speed of trust. I will tell you, I have

• 12:29Speaker 02

  never felt more empowered to do right by customer than I have the last two years being head of sales for North America here at Zoom. I know that if I make a decision and the decision is rooted in doing something right by my customer, then I have the full support of Zoom behind me. And I don't have to go through a bureaucratic engine to go get things approved. The trust is in me to make a decision. That's a very empowering feeling that I have never been as empowered in my career before.

• 12:58Harry Stebbings?

  I mean this respect, you've known Eric Twenty years, you are a very wise, seasoned sales leader. When you're hiring twenty five year olds, thirty year olds, you name it, and you don't have that long term relationship and they're less bluntly mature. Is it difficult to scale that incredibly deep trust that one has with, you know, the longer, more mature people? Do you know what I mean? Is it hard?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's a great point. And of course, you have mechanisms and processes put in place. There are guardrails that if guardrails are reached, then there are triggers, people having to help make those decisions. But there are less guardrails here than I have seen before, or the guardrails are set up so thoughtfully, where we just don't get bogged down in a lot of bureaucracy. So it's a great question. And yes, we've got plenty of sales reps that are early on in their career. But I feel like even giving them the ability to know that we trust them to go run their processes,

• 13:57Speaker 02

  know that we're here for them, and we are definitely a leadership team that rolls up our sleeves and gets intimately involved. But no, they feel they are trusted to, again, do right by customer. But of course, there will be times and places where there are checks and balances. But we're very careful not to bog ourselves down in that too much.

• 14:17Harry Stebbings?

  If we move down to actually like the people that we add to the team, I'd love to understand you, as I said, putting on the founder hat with you advising me, and I need to add a sales team. What are some non-obvious characteristics and attitudes that incredible ten X sales hires have that I should look for when adding to my team?

• 14:34Speaker 02

  I love this question, Harry. So there are three things. The first thing I like to look in a ten X salesperson and a ten X person is personal ownership. Personal ownership means a real understanding, I'm part of a bigger picture. My number is my manager's number, is my segment leader's number, is my head of North America's number, is part of the company number. And that's a very big thing. And that's hard to teach. People have it or they don't have it. The second thing I look for in a ten Xer is out-professionalizing the competition, that extra touch. People buy from people they trust. People buy from people who will go the extra Extra mile for them. You know, there's a survey of a hundred thousand poker hands play.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Eighty-eight percent of the time, it's not the best hand that wins, it's the best player that wins. It's that best player that out-professionalizes their competition. And then the third is that hustle factor. The ability to multitask with multiple deals in play, if we're talking about a salesperson at the same time, and not letting any of those balls drop, and the ability to not just work on one, but work on many. That hustle factor. And, you know, do they act like a CEO? You know, are they always upping their game? And will they always continue to work on bettering themselves, you know, versus just working more? Hustle factor doesn't mean just work hard. So there's a lot that goes into the hustle factor.

• 15:50Harry Stebbings?

  So we have those, and we understand that those are the characteristics and traits that make the ten X's ten X. How do we uncover them in terms of the questions and the case studies when we're interviewing? Again, I'm a founder, I've never hired a sales rep or sales lead before. What do I ask them to discover that?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't believe there are specific questions. I think it's not what people say when you ask questions, Harry. And when you ask for examples, it's how they answer the questions and the examples. Do they have authentic conviction? Can they speak openly and honestly about their mistakes? Do they come across as self-aware? Back to what we were talking about earlier, this is where hiring that first head of sales, you know, they can really discern the actors from the real deal. And so I really think it's a lot of the authenticity, and it's again, not what they say, but it's how they say it.

• 16:38Harry Stebbings?

  How do they say it wrong? If you were interviewing me, what things would make you go, oof?

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good follow-on. I feel like it's more of you get some of the flippant answers, you get some of the generic answers. The gold is in the second and third level questions too. You're really asking them the meaning, like share how that happened, share what you felt like when perhaps that deal didn't go your way. Or back to, you know, personal ownership, share with me when you were at the end of a closing period, month, quarter, fiscal year, and you were already well past your number, but the team needed the extra deal. So share with me what you did, how you acted, how you acted around others around. To pull them up with you and then getting the answers that are people are coming across. You can feel if they're being genuine or if they are being textbook or flippant.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  People that quote a lot of things from books and here I am talking to you about speed of trust. But I feel like when I did speed of trust, you heard me come across, I hope, feeling genuine about what I take away from that and how I apply it. Those are all things that I look for.

• 17:41Harry Stebbings?

  I think I always look for tying back to data, which is like, we can sit here and I go, Mitch, I increased from demo to signed by twenty eight percent in Q three with these three strategies. That's like real, not some lofty element. I always tie that.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  I love data too. Like I told you, I'm a data junkie, but then I would go underneath that question and ask about what's the, you know, average deal size? What's the length of deal process? You know, and I really then go second level, third level and unpack the data even further. It's hard in an interview. I don't know the business model of the company that they're interviewing from. You know, I have to then second level, third level the data questions to number one, see if they really understand it and where they fit in that whole model. And then number two, I can try and see if it matches my business. A good break.

• 18:30Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, in terms of the process itself, like, how should we structure hiring these people? Is it like first interview, intro and like, are you any good? Second case study, third final and closing. How do you think about structuring the right process of hiring?

• 18:44Speaker 02

  This is something that I have brought from company to company and something that I hold near and dear is first, we talk to, you know, three to four people internally. And I identify the same three or four people as key stakeholders for whatever role that I'm hiring for. And so we do three to four interviews with internal folks that I have identified as as the key set of folks that we want feedback from. And then we do what we call as a stand and deliver candidate comes. We have no more than five to six people on the panel, but they join us either in person when that was a thing or via Zoom. They present what's going to be telling in this. Is there active listening in the process? Listening to people's reactions, responses, how do they manage their time? What is their content?

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Look like, how do they organize their thoughts? You know, are they including specifics in their approach versus a generic thirty, sixty, ninety day plan, which we do ask them to put together? But are they engaging and answering maybe the surprise question? How do they react maybe when something goes wrong technically with setup? Or, you know, something goes wrong and something didn't hit the way they wanted to hit? Then finally, and this is a controversial one out there on LinkedIn right now, but the thank you note. You know, earlier I talked about out professionalizing the competition. This is another piece of professionalism from my seat. I think it's a solid way to stand out after things have commenced. You know, if they don't do this for you in the interview process, will they not do it for customer when they're working with customer?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  So are they creative in their follow up? Those are all things that that I like to look for in the hiring process.

• 20:19Harry Stebbings?

  I'm so with you on the thank you note. I think it really differentiates the good from the great. And I find so few people do the follow up.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  It's crazy, right? It blows my mind as well.

• 20:28Harry Stebbings?

  No, I'm with you. Okay, so we've got the profile. We've got those characteristics. We know how to uncover them. And yes, Mitch, I found them. I've done it. You as the advisor have helped me so much. Now we need to onboard them. What should the ideal onboarding process look like for the new reps we've hired? And how should I structure that as the founder?

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Onboarding is such a critical part of a seller's journey. From a seller's journey perspective, you could only have two outcomes from onboarding beyond ready to sell. It's number one, that they know in their head and their heart that they made the right choice for them to sell it at your company. So infusing that they know in their head and their heart that they made that right choice. And then number two, do they know how to be successful with the product or service? And the processes that they have available to them at the company? It's interesting, there's a balance in onboarding. Onboarding new sellers needs to be a balance between enough product knowledge and skill mask. You know, Zoom, we have a month long onboarding process for all of our newest sales hire. Each week we focus on a topic.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  It's either product, it's either sales process, role specific knowledge. We have done this now virtually for the past nineteen months. And as you have seen Zoom's amazing growth, you know, we have grown not Just in number of customers or revenue, we have grown, our company has doubled in size. And you know, our sales team has doubled in size. We have had to onboard remotely hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. So doing this meaningfully during a remote experience is not an easy task and we have done extremely well. I actually just did a session, what I call voice of the rep. I do it every quarter. I pull two different people from every segment in the business. I have seven segments.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  And we pull new hires and veterans together. We ask them to share what's working in the business, what needs a boost in the business, and then a solution to the items that need a boost. We mix them, we mix the segments, we mix the tenure, and I come in and I do a lot of listening.

• 22:26Harry Stebbings?

  So for me as the founder here, hiring these reps and onboarding them, I should spend like make them spend a lot of time with product, building their product knowledge up. I should make them spend a lot of time with me so I can share my sales process. Is that it? Or do I just say, hey, we're a super early stage company, go try?

• 22:41Speaker 02

  No, it's the former, not the latter. Now, you've got to hire people that know how to go out and go try though, right? So it's the former, a lot of time with me, a lot of time with product. So they understand what they're selling, they understand process wise, how to sell it. Then you do need to hire people that understand how to live in a world of ambiguity, especially early on. Cause there's going to be plenty of unknowns and ambiguity. So you've got to hire people that can survive in that world. Where you can say, you know what, go figure it out. But I think, you know, giving them the right experience on the front end means, means a lot.

• 23:16Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, in terms of the tasks, the processes, the duties, what would you expect new hires to perform in those first few months? To set the foundations for them being successful in their role?

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, good question. So we definitely define what a seller should be able to do in a very clear thirty, sixty, ninety day plan. And we spend a lot of time with our sales managers, ensuring that they hold their teams to those plans. So if I'm a founder, I'm going to define what thirty, sixty, ninety day looks like. And then I'm hoping I'm going to have a head of sales, because then she will. Confuse that with all of those reps. But these include things like prospecting, how to run proof of concept, how to truly do account planning, how to plan for a territory, how do you do a territory plan and territory management of that plan? Product and pitch certifications. We do a lot of certifying here and I did certify when I was sales rep number 10 at Webex,

• 24:10Speaker 02

  all the way to, you know, leading a thousand here. Really understanding the corporate pitch, the corporate story. Storytelling is a big part of it. And then we spent a lot of time on pipe creation and pipe conversion. And I think the biggest piece is you have to have these things documented out and know between enablement team and the sales management team, who's doing what and why.

• 24:29Harry Stebbings?

  How do you think about making the teams work so well together? Cause you can often find the kind of siloed and then often if you tie quota or achievements to certain things, they'll just focus on theirs and fuck enablement or whatever. How do you make them communicate efficiently?

• 24:43Speaker 02

  I mean, a big part of it is bringing them in. And what I mean by bringing them in is ensuring that, you know, they're sharing each other's plans, they're sharing each other's strategies in each other's meetings. And look, we don't like to just do meetings to have meetings, but you have to involve your cross-functional teams with you if you're going to be successful. I meet regularly, every single week with my peer on the solution engineering side. I meet regularly every week with my peer in customer success. I meet regularly with my specialty sales leader. They are part of my quarterly business reviews. I'm part of their quarterly business reviews. So it isn't just, I'm working on my thing, you're working on your thing. I know we both depend on each other.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  You have to really, really engage and bring them together and ensure that they're working that way together.

• 25:32Harry Stebbings?

  This question is impossible to answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway because I'm too intrigued. I'm a founder setting quota now for the first time. I'm ambitious, I see huge market, I see huge opportunity. How do you think about how to set a quota that is both ambitious, but also achievable where people are not feeling completely terrified or demotivated if they don't hit it? How do you think about that right balance?

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Sales reps want to feel like they are winning. They want to feel. They want to go home at night and they want to sit down at the dinner table and look across at their family or significant other and feel like they've won today. And it's really important to set up the rule of the game, be it quota, to where they can not only achieve but overachieve. A lot of that then dovetails, Harry, into the comp plan because the comp plan can then be an equalizer for you. But I feel like a sales rep has chosen this profession because they are the ones that are the 10 Xers. They want to win. You have an opportunity when you set up quota and your comp plan to ensure your number is achievable enough

• 26:37Speaker 02

  where people can go beyond the number and get into multipliers and accelerators. Sales reps are going to feel like if I'm just doing everything I can, I'm coming to the end of a closing period and I just don't see the finish line. There is an innate feeling, emotion, that will say, you know what? I'm going to give up and I'm going to go attack it again the next period. But if I'm going into that closing period and I'm right at the number and I see at 110%, 120%, 150%, there is another echelon for me to get to, I'm going to run through walls. So I think it's a great question you ask. I think it's a really important one is setting up the rules, the game for people to win.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  You're going to make a bet that people are going to go overachieve against that. But if you set it too high, people will give up and wait till the next period close.

• 27:29Harry Stebbings?

  That was going to be my next question, which is like, when you attain your quota, yes, attain my quota, got my bonus, woo hoo. How do you prevent them from going, sod it, I hit quota, I've done my job, I've got six days left of the quota, sod it, I'm just going to take it easy now because I've hit my quota. How do you still keep that fire of, I need to do more than my quota, I can do more. How do you make that work?

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Number one, you go back to what I said earlier, you hire the right people that have personal ownership. Because just because they got there doesn't mean their team isn't there or the company hasn't hit what they hit. You have to look for people that have that sense of it's bigger than just me. So not an easy thing to go find, but it's something you should be looking for in people. That's first. And then secondly, again, Going back to how you set up the comp plan to where the deal now is so much more valuable to me than if they close it the first day of the next period. I'm going to go manufacture a way to go get that deal now rather than let it delay. And I think that's where an effective comp plan can help you achieve that.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Setting up good, solid accelerators, multipliers, there's ways to do bonuses either inside the plan or outside the plan. But there's ways to turn dials through that comp plan to where people absolutely want to over.

• 28:40Harry Stebbings?

  No, I totally agree, especially when you see kind of accelerants post quota. I think that often works very well. You said there about kind of then feeling like they're winning. Sometimes you do lose, sometimes you lose a deal to a competitor and it sucks. How do you think about post mortems as a team when a deal is lost and when actually we missed out on a customer? How do you do post mortems?

• 28:59Speaker 02

  I am a very big believer in key deal reviews. You call them KDRs and we run them weekly across pretty much all segments. Even in the SMB, we're doing key deal reviews, really getting into the construct of a deal and understanding the mechanisms of that deal. You know, who at the customer is a detractor, who is absolutely a champion or a coach, who is on our side, who is against us? What are the budget constraints? Where's the product fit? What's the competitive landscape look like? We go through our methodology, we run a full end to end sales methodology. We also conduct large deal reviews at the manager level every single week. We draw an MRR threshold and we bring the management team in every week.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  And we hold our managers accountable and expect our managers to review these top deals every week in these sessions. As we get up into the enterprise, our chief revenue officer is there, our legal team is there, our SC team is there, our specialty team is there. And we come to these every single week for each segment in these, you know, 90 minute deal reviews where the management team has to know their deals inside and out. Like a set of criteria that we expect them to take us. So I believe if both of these motions are done well, deal reviews and these large deal review meetings at the management level. And they're done well and they're done consistently. There's almost not a need for a larger post mortem on the deal as when you lose a deal because that will happen.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Identified so much upfront, you know the deal of certain size, you don't need to do that postmortem. And regardless, we do quarterly lessons learned, you know, and a big deal loss can and should be addressed within areas of your control, what happened with the customer, et cetera. But I'm a big believer in you do all that work upfront, it sets you up for success to not lose a deal, but then you're going to know exactly why you lost it.

• 30:41Harry Stebbings?

  I think my final question to you is, we mentioned enterprise there a couple of times. A hard thing I find is like very often, we both know enterprise contracts can take nine months, 12 months, 18 months to sign. If I'm a founder with my new sales team and we're in enterprise, three months in, four months in, they haven't sold anything, but it's just a process and time. How do you know if they're good or it's just a very long process? And how long do you give them?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  So that's a big question. It depends on a set of key factors, average deal size, selling model, what your selling model is. It does depend on the overall quota being set, like, you know, what is the quota? And are you running a quarterly quota? Are you running a six month quota? Are you running an annual quota? Are you running a monthly quota? I think it also depends, Harry, on what's shifting in the market. It seems though like the one whale deal that a rep sells to make their number. Look, too many reps will put all their eggs in, you know, one basket. And if that basket turns up empty, they're hosed, their team is hosed. In some cases, the company can be hosed. So there has to be mechanisms to balance, you know, how many? I'll give you a baseball analogy, right?

• 31:44Speaker 02

  How many triples and home runs do you have versus managing the singles and the doubles at the same time? You know, also, I think, you know, many companies are land and expand and retain, right? That's their model, smaller price points to start to expand along the way. So I think that is also another factor in this. And small wins along the way, but larger wins are going to take six to nine months. But I think there's a lot of dependencies there.

• 32:07Harry Stebbings?

  I do want to move into my favorite though Mitch, which is the quick fire round. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts, is that okay?

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Yes, let's do it.

• 32:14Harry Stebbings?

  So what sales tactics have not changed over the last five years?

• 32:18Speaker 02

  Authentic and curious problem solving. Customers have more and new problems than they've ever had before. How do sellers really address that with both skill and enthusiasm? So I think it's Really being authentic and truly being a curious problem solver. That has not changed. Those are the out professionalizers that are the eighty eight percent of the poker hand players that win.

• 32:39Harry Stebbings?

  What sales tactics have died a death on the other side of the table?

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, the old way of doing mail merges from a prospecting perspective, that's died a death. To quote my good friend John Barros, it's all about context in your prospecting versus content when prospecting. And I think the old way was more very content driven. And I think it's all about context now. And I think that old way of doing mail merges has died a death.

• 33:04Harry Stebbings?

  What would you say is the biggest mistake founders make when hiring sales teams?

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Homogeneous hiring, you know, lack of diversity across skills, lack of diversity across backgrounds. Putting it all into one form factor can be a very, very big mistake. You need diversity across so many different parts of the organization. And I think that's my answer there.

• 33:25Harry Stebbings?

  What one piece of advice would you give to a sales leader starting a new role in the coming weeks or months?

• 33:30Speaker 02

  I'll give you two here. One is, as a sales leader, find the yin to your yang. You know, people that always agree with you, that they're not helping you grow into the leader that you should be. So you gotta lean in when somebody positively and professionally challenges you. Seek out the contrarian advice to where you think. So the yin to the yang. And then the second is, you can't do it alone. You know, it might seem like you can early on, but sales is complex. It's fast. You're gonna need to bring in, you know, the right supporting cast of players to help you build out your vision. So find the yin to your yang and you can't do it alone.

• 34:05Harry Stebbings?

  Final one, what would you most like to change about the world of sales today?

• 34:08Speaker 02

  There's a notion of people out there that think sales is an easy job, and it ain't. You know, I look at what a seller needs to know about their own company, product, people, process. And then you add in the twenty, forty, eighty, eight hundred companies they're selling to. You know, talking about out professionalizing their competition and really, really knowing their customer. It's amazing what is on a seller's plate to go execute. And there is a notion that sales is an easy job. It absolutely is not.

• 34:36Harry Stebbings?

  Oh, my word. I do not think it's an easy job, my friend. I have so much respect for you. But listen, this has been so much fun, Steve Mitch. I can't thank you enough for putting up with my prying and slightly wayward questions. It really has been a pleasure.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Thank you, Harry. It's been a pleasure. It's been mine. And I love that you're doing this.

• 34:54Harry Stebbings?

  I love that discussion with Mitch and I want to say a huge thank you to him for being so open on their process and how they operate at Zoom. Such a joy to do. If you'd like to see more from us, of course you can at 20vc.com. But before we leave you today, here's an alarming stat for sales leaders out there. According to research done by Zand.com, only 28% of deals are forecasted accurately. 28%. Why is that? Either you don't have enough reliable data to draw from in Salesforce, or you based your forecast on wishful thinking instead of facts. So how do you get your team to input all the data you need without hounding them around every corner and taking away their selling time? Well, that's where Dooley comes in. Dooley is what top performing sales reps use day to day instead of Salesforce. It's the fastest, easiest way for

• 35:37Harry Stebbings?

  sellers to input deal data in real time, update their pipeline in a snap, and manage every deal at once. So nothing falls through the cracks. It's a dream for sales teams because reps save hours of admin grunt work and managers get up to 60% more accurate deal data in Salesforce. So you can build a sales forecast you can feel confident about. Visit dooley.ai/demo to speak with a Dooley rep today. And speaking of upleveling your team with incredible tools like Dooley there, SalesLoft is the leading sales engagement platform, helping sales teams drive more revenue with the modern revenue workspace. It's the one place sales teams can go to prospect, manage active deals, and get the insights they need to coach seller performance, forecast with accuracy,

• 36:20Harry Stebbings?

  and find out what steps to take to close more deals. Some of the world's leading companies like IBM, Shopify, and Stripe all love and use SalesLoft, and so can you. It's the new way to sell. Find out more at salesloft.com. And finally, to scale your business, you need customers. But the CRM software model is 35 years old and never evolved to properly support modern businesses. Most legacy platforms were built for a single, rigid, repeatable sales process. Well, Copper is dramatically different kind of CRM. Built for Google Workspace businesses, Copper works right alongside you in your inbox. And so it's flexible, it's versatile, you'll love it regardless of how you run your business. Plus, it requires virtually no training because it works just like all your

• 37:03Harry Stebbings?

  Your apps work, get set up in less than a day and easily customize your CRM to fit your needs. This will be the first time that your team loves you as a leader for the choice of CRM. I promise you that. And so see why more than 30,000 businesses love Copper. A flexible CRM that grows with you. Get a 20% discount on any annual plan. Just go to copper.com/20vc. As always, I so appreciate all your support and I can't wait to bring you a fantastic episode with Noah Glass at Olo on Friday.